Intel Z390 Motherboard Review Collection
Per a post over at the ASUS ROG Forums, ASUS is finally going to bring resizable BAR support to their Z370/Z390 product lines with an estimated timeframe of late April to early May. ASUS has been quite slow with the roll out relative to the competition leaving customers behind. It’s good to see some action from ASUS on this matter, so if you’re looking forward to this feature it may finally arrive in (relatively ) short order.
Read more @ ROG Forums
Intel isn’t slow to pull the curtain down on its products when replacements are waiting in the wings. Last month, the company discontinued its entire 9th-gen Coffee Lake Refresh line, including the still-excellent Core i9-9900K. Its predecessor, the 8th-gen Coffee Lake CPUs, were discontinued in June 2020.
The announcement comes just before the start of CES 2021 next week, where Intel will likely reveal its 500-series motherboards. These feature an LGA1200 socket, so both the 10th-gen Comet Lake-S and upcoming 11th-gen Rocket Lake-S chips are supported.
Read more @ TechSpot
So similar is the Z390 Gaming X layout to the previously-tested Gaming SLI that we had to do a double-take, at first glance finding nothing more than the center slot missing the pricier-board’s metal cover and the lower slot switched from x16-length to x1.
Read more @ Tom’s Hardware
Even though the TUF Z390-Pro Gaming motherboard by ASUS is one of their budget models it is based on the very good Intel Z390 chipset which is the best one can get for an LGA 1151 CPU (something which will probably never change since the Z490 chipset with the LGA 1200 CPUs is just days away).
Read more @ NikKTech
The Z390 PGX is a standard ATX form-factor motherboard at 12 x 9.6 inches, and features a black high-density glass fabric PCB design which ASRock says “reduces the gaps between the PCB layers to protect the motherboard against electrical shorts caused by humidity”.
Read more @ PC Perspective
Now I can’t really say that I was impressed with the performance of either the Realtek ALC1220-VB audio card (still prefer the Creative Sound Blaster Recon3D model used in the Z390 Dark) or the cFosSpeed internet enhancements used with the Intel I219-V 1 Gigabit LAN (virtually no difference with network performance measurements taken with the other two Z390 boards) but it goes without saying that not everything is meant to stand out (at least nowhere near what manufacturers make them out to be).
Read more @ NikKTech
It goes without saying but having used and reviewed very old motherboard models with onboard switches (for power/restart/OC) and displays means that I expect something along those lines from all the latest models (regardless of price range) so lacking all of the above is a hit and miss for me and pretty much one of the only serious drawbacks of this model.
Read more @ NikKTech
The rotated CPU socket and DIMM slots do seem to help with airflow levels and the 17-phase VRM design does wonders when it comes to overclocking (can easily go well over 5GHZ on the i9-9900K if you have a very good cooler). RAM compatibility is also very good since the Z390 Dark supports modules with speeds surpassing 4600MHZ (we may get a chance to test some 4800MHZ modules on it to verify this).
Read more @ NikKTech
The main area of difference is the CPU VRM which is improved for Intel’s Core i9 9900KS with its standard 127W TDP, up from 95W on the Core i9 9900K. While Intel’s i9 9900KS wasn’t released until October 2019, ASRock had already released the Phantom Gaming X revision by July 2019 in anticipation of the release that Intel had communicated to its board partners.
Read more @ KitGuru
Asus currently lists 52 ROG motherboards in its impressive line-up of which 11 use the Z390 chipset to support Intel 9th Gen. Coffee Lake. The ROG Maximus XI Formula sits at the top of that particular stack and has been designed to address the vexed issue of VRM cooling, thanks to the use of a CrossChill III VRM hybrid cooling block made by EK water blocks.
Read more @ KitGuru